Monday, March 31, 2014

I did a quick thought on the Wesley Seminary blog about the flood of movies of interest to Christians that are out right now: http://wesleyconnectonline.com/christians-at-the-movies/

My three warnings are:

Avoid "three wise men" syndrome.

Value Truth more than tradition.

Remember the mission.

I hope to see God is not dead early this week and comment on it since it deals with philosophy. I'm not expecting to enjoy it for several reasons:

It seems to be built out of a fictional urban legend regularly forwarded as email spam that I have heard repeatedly throughout my life.

The philosophy professor has all the makings of a straw man. Any atheist professor of this sort should be fired from any respectable secular university. Although I can believe there are professors like this who exist out there, they would be mocked and considered incompetent by other atheist philosophy professors. Philosophy is about asking questions, not about indoctrination.

It assumes a debatable model of faith, where faith is a matter of proof. It is a very popular apologetic but one that can be questioned. For me, the best model is one in which God comes to us rather than us trying to rationally come to God.

It seems likely that Hebrews was a sermon that the author sent to the church, perhaps in Rome.

We don't know who the author was. It wasn't likely Paul, not least because it's hard to see Paul writing this verse, which places the author at a further distance from Jesus than Paulsaw himself.

I'm not sure that the assumptions of the introduction to the reading are as obvious as the writer seems to think. For example, the beginning teachings of Hebrews 5:11-6:2 do not read like the kinds of first teachings a Jew would need to learn.

Similarly, if Hebrews were written before the destruction of the temple, we can wonder why the author does not just come out and say not to rely on the temple. Why speak so obliquely and theoretically about the wilderness tabernacle and make allusions to having no remaining city here and being wanderers on the earth?

Hebrews 1 starts off the sermon with a celebratory hymn of sorts. It is a poetic celebration of Christ's enthronement at God's right hand. It's hard, IMO, for us to read these verses without post-Nicaean glasses on. But all the verses can be read in relation to Jesus being enthroned as Son of God as he was enthroned king at God's right hand.

Hebrews 2 gives us the human problem and Christ's solution. God created humanity to have glory in the creation but we do not have this glory because of sin and death. So Jesus has partaken of human flesh so that he can finally lead many sons and daughters to glory.

Hebrews 3-4 warns the audience to keep going in faith. They, like Israel, have left Egypt. They have started the journey of faith. But if they do not continue in faith all the way to the end, their corpses will fall in the desert like the Israelites did. We have the opportunity of entering God's rest. We had better do so.

Significant to realize that the word of God in 4:12 is not the Bible. There is a history here in Jewish wisdom speculation. The word of God is the will of God in action. Here is an interesting parallel.

Personal favorite

Hebrews 4:13 says that the whole creation is laid bare before God's eyes, whose word is for us. God sees. God knows. Do we live as if he does?

Last week was about God's omnipotence. This week we move on to omniscience. Here's the developing map.
____________________
God knows every possible thing to know. He knows every possible thing that could happen in this universe.

That doesn't quite get us to "all knowing" yet. That's the next article. God's "omniscience" is the Christian belief that God knows everything, both possible and actual.

We know that God knows everything that is possible because he created the world out of nothing. Creating the world out of nothing--including the emptiness--is not like when you or I make something in the kitchen or when some architect designs things. We not only have inherited the materials from the creation but we have inherited the laws of physics and chemistry that set the boundaries for what we can create and how materials interact with one another.

Not so for God. When God created the universe out of nothing, he created the laws of physics and chemistry. He created the boundaries for what materials can and cannot do. There is nothing that exists in this universe that God did not completely and utterly design. He therefore knows everything it is possible to know and even more.

Often when we think about God, we mistakenly assume that his knowledge is similar to the way we know things. For example, for us, there is a difference between knowing things with your head and knowing things experientially. But since God created the universe out of nothing, he created any experience you could possibly have.

This is a significant point. God created even experiences like suffering and sinning. The humanity of Jesus learned obedience and suffering on the cross (Heb. 5:8), but God the Father and God the Spirit did not learn anything on the cross. God created the possibility of experiencing suffering. God created the possibility of learning obedience.

Similarly, God created Satan and the angels who fell from heaven. God created the possibility that Satan would fall. God created the possibility that Adam would sin. Later, we will look at the question of how a good God could create the possibility of evil. For now, however, we need to point out that God must know what it feels like to sin because God created this possibility out of nothing. He designed the universe to have this possible experience in it.

If a person believes that God has built some freedom into the creation, which I do, then the causes and effects of the universe can play themselves out in more than one possible way. There become, as it were, multiple "possible universes." I believe that God has made it possible for human beings to make more than one possible choice, despite the causes working on them. It may even be possible on the subatomic level that God has put some indeterminacy into the creation itself. [1]

Because God created the universe, he at the very least knows every possible eventuality. He knows how the universe can bend because he created all those possibilities. This knowledge is sometimes called "middle knowledge." [2] He knows every possible world that could exist depending on the choices people make.

There are two other forms of God's knowledge that are sometimes discussed. Certainly God knows how he will freely act in this world, his "free knowledge." However, it is important to realize that what are sometimes called "necessary truths" (e.g., 2 + 2 = 4) are also products of God's creation. Some Christian philosophers inadvertently blur God with the creation by forgetting that, when he created the universe out of nothing, he freely created all the possible axioms, postulates, and consequent theorems of math and other so called necessary truths. Necessary truths thus exist as an act of God's free will just like all other truths.

An argument for the existence of God that fits with his knowledge of the world is the so called "argument from design" or "teleological" argument for God's existence. The idea is that the complexity of the universe, its design, suggests that it had an intelligent designer.

The argument was classically set forth in the 1700s by William Paley along in the lines of a clockmaker. [3] The idea is that when you find a clock, you assume there was a clockmaker that made it. So Paley argued that something as complex as the universe must have had a universe maker.

The theory of evolution at the very least made it more difficult to make this argument. Nevertheless, there is more to the design of the universe than the specific complexity of life. There are the rules of the universe itself, the laws of physics and chemistry, for example. [4] Whether you find this argument convincing or not as a proof, Christians have no problem seeing the order and complexity of the universe as a reflection of God's omniscience.

Next Sunday, G6. God knows every actual thing to know.

[1] The current consensus in the field of quantum physics is that there is a fundamental indeterminacy to the universe on the subatomic level. The beginnings of this trajectory in physics trace back to the "uncertainty principle" of Werner Heisenberg first set out in 1927.

[2] The idea of middle knowledge can fit both with those who believe God determines all human choices and those who believe God gives humans some freedom in their choices.

[3] In a work called, Natural Theology.

[4] Richard Swinburne has made this argument in The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).

Chapter 3 is called "Correct Mathematics, Abominable Physics"
I feel a bit sorry for Einstein. He had a few very significant "outside the box" thoughts in very early 1900s. He generally seemed to have them bouncing ideas off of genius friends and acquaintances. His college buddy Marcel Grossman helped him bounce his way into special relativity in 1905. Then David Hilbert helped him find his way to general relativity in 1915.

But after that, he pretty much became a celebrity "has been" and eventually a "cuckoo," as Oppenheimer once called him. One of the things I find striking about these chapters is how closed minded the greats were. They rose to fame on thinking outside the box but then became part of the establishment that pretty much ignored new ideas that didn't fit with their sense of things. It's all pretty straightforward Thomas Kuhn stuff.

So, in this chapter, we hear how Einstein and Eddington basically ignored a string of relativity enthusiasts who came to them showing how there were possible solutions to the general relativity functions that might point to an expanding universe. Alexander Friedmann was a Russian who showed that, according to Einstein's functions, the universe had either to expand or contract. Einstein mistakenly corrected him in publication when it was Einstein's mistake.

Einstein and Eddington, for whatever reason, just didn't like the idea of an expanding universe. Georges Lemaître, a Roman Catholic priest, was another who showed this to Einstein. Einstein's response was that his calculations were correct mathematically but that his "physics was abominable."

Eventually, Einstein would have to eat dirt, as would Eddington. In 1925, Hubble showed that there were galaxies beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Then by January of 1929, Hubble and Humason had both shown that the redshifts of these far away nebulae were larger than those closer to us. In other words, the universe was expanding.

Lemaître had been one of Eddington's own students and he had ignored him. But in the end, both Eddington and Einstein would repent and thrust him into center stage. He would become the world's leading cosmologist. Although Lemaître came to his conclusions scientifically, he of course believed that his findings, that the universe expanded from a beginning, fit with his faith in God.

Chapter 4 is called "Collapsing Stars"
Einstein and Eddington also found the idea of a burned out star that might collapse in on itself "absurd." In other words, the idea of a black hole didn't fit with their sensibilities. Eddington had written a classic book in 1926 called The Internal Constitution of Stars, but he couldn't bring himself to see a star becoming so dense that not even light could get out, so much so that the inside of the star became permanently shut off from the outside world.

The work of several "relativists" pointed in this direction. The Russian Karl Schwarzschild died prematurely of illness in 1916, but he had simplified some aspects of Einstein's theory, explained some loose ends in the prediction of Mercury and other planets' orbits. But his work had also curiously predicted the phenomenon of black holes.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra for short) integrated some of the developments in quantum mechanics into the relativity of stars and supported Schwarzchild's conclusions from a different angle. But when he presented it, Eddington's clout ruled it out. Mathematically possible but not something that would take place in the elegant universe as he saw it. Chandra would then abandon his research on the subject of white dwarfs, even though he was pretty much correct.

The last part of this chapter is about Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb and leader of the Manhattan Project. He set up quite the physics team at Berkeley. He and one of his students published a paper in 1939 arguing for black holes. Of course it came out the day that the Nazi's invaded Poland, and it would disappear for a good while.

Chapter 5 is called, "Completely Cuckoo"
This was Oppenheimer's description of Einstein in his later years at Princeton. Einstein could never reconcile himself with the quantum physics of Heisenburg's uncertainty principle. He spent his last years more or less as a recluse trying to find a grand unified theory that would never come.

These were apparently years when general relativity was viewed somewhat like string theory is today in many circles. Without any clear way experimentally to test it, those who work with it seem to be playing idiosyncratic games with math without any real pay off in the real world.

In the 50s, Princeton played home to a number of famous thinkers, the "Institute for Advanced Study." But before Ferreira, the author of the book, gets there, he reviews how the Nazi's opposed Einstein's theory as "Jewish physics." In the USSR, there was similar opposition by materialists to the seemingly idealized world of Einstein. Of course things like the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race were too important for the Nazis or the Soviets in the end to let these "fundamentalists" win.

One friend Einstein did have at Princeton in these years was Kurt Gödel. He played with Einsteins general relativity equations and asked what would the universe be like if it were rotating on a central axis. The result? Spacetime would loop back on itself and you could actually travel back in time. Einstein's reaction to his friend's work was predictable--mathematically interesting but completely unrelated to the real world.

Oppenheimer would eventually move from Berkeley to Princeton to head the Institute. He and Einstein had a cordial relationship. Oppenheimer respected Einstein even if he considered him cuckoo and more of a landmark than a beacon in the story of physics. He would later say that Einstein "did no good" in his later life. However, Einstein supported Oppenheimer when he hit on hard times for being opposed to the Hydrogen bomb. Oppie would come to regret the Manhatten project and, in time, he lost his national security clearance. But Einstein supported him and was untouchable in the public eye. Einstein was a pacifist.

Chapter 6: "Radio Days"
This chapter has to do with the discovery of the quasar, which gives off massive radio waves. A lot of the chapter deals with the charismatic Fred Hoyle, who pioneered the "steady state" theory of the universe. Hoyle found the idea that the universe had a beginning and started with a "big bang" a detestable idea. He suggested that the universe was constantly generating enough matter to keep going. It thus wouldn't need a beginning.

Because Hoyle was able to get the idea out to the public, it was taken quite seriously by the British masses, even though few scientists thought the data supported him at all. Suffice it to say, they repaid him by refusing to publish his papers for two or three years.

Hoyle's theory would eventually be shown incorrect.

I don't know if I'll get around to blogging any more from this book. I do hope to finish it in the next couple months. If I find anything I think is really interesting, I may be back...

So ends the fifth week of the 40 Day Bible experience, finishing up the Gospel of Matthew.

Here are some highlights:

The anointing of Jesus at Bethany, the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus' arrest, his appearance before the high priest and elders, and Peter's denial in Matthew 26 are mostly taken straight, sometimes almost word for word, from Mark 14.

Matthew 27 is mostly Mark 15 but with some unique features. For example, only Matthew among the Gospels shows Judas with buyer's remorse. Only in Matthew does it say that Judas hanged himself. Here is also one of the minor distinctions between the Gospels. In Matthew the priests buy the field where Judas' body ends up while in Acts 1 Judas himself buys the field.

Matthew uniquely tells of the people saying to let Jesus' blood be on their own hands. Some in history have used this verse as an instrument of anti-Semitism, a good example of people twisting the Bible's words in order to do evil. If we recognize that Matthew was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, however, this verse comes to give an implicit explanation to Matthew's audience of why God allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed in AD70.

Matthew 28 has some unique post-resurrection features that are not found in any other Gospel. These include the soldiers at the tomb and the Great Commission.

Although there are some very intelligent outliers, the vast majority of experts on the text of Mark do not think that 16:9-20 were part of the original version of Mark. I personally think that these verses are a pastiche of the resurrection narratives of Matthew, Luke, and John. So someone in the second century added these verses to their copy of Mark because 16:8 didn't seem like an appropriate ending. I also have a hunch there was another original ending that was lost at a very, very early date. Some think the ending of Matthew gives us a good sense of what the original ending of Mark was like.

The incident of the soldiers at the tomb has one very interesting feature. It implies that even some 40+ years after the resurrection, no one had yet produced Jesus' body or claimed to have it. Those who opposed the resurrection accepted that there was an empty tomb.

The Great Commission is given in Galilee, not Jerusalem, so unless Luke has intentionally moved the location, this scene is not the same event as the ascension in Acts 1.

The Great Commission is more about discipleship than evangelism as we think of it today. It is not about getting people to pray a sinner's prayer, baptizing them, and then leaving them alone in their eternal security. It's not only about getting them in the body of Christ but, even more significantly, about teaching them all of Jesus' commands, IMO.

My take away:

Jesus is with us! The resurrected Immanuel of Matthew 1 is with us till the end of this age!

Spoiler alert: Some of my family and I went to see the movie Noah last night. To be honest, I was hoping I would like it. There is a fundamentalist machine that goes crazy at all sorts of things, and it drives me crazy. Social media just seems to amplify the emotions of anyone who gets emotional--on all sides, conservative and liberal alike. America is this vast mob of irrationality.

I watched some Fox the other night and I said to myself, "Their job is to find something to mock or poke fun at about Obama or anything vaguely liberal." The night I watched, there wasn't much substantial to make fun of, so I thought they were in a kind of dry heave. Mocking but without a lot today to mock. It just came off as silly, I thought.

Well, I'm disappointed to say that I didn't enjoy the Noah movie at all. I know 1 Enoch. I know the Watchers (check out chapters 10 and 14, for example). If they were going to go apocalyptic, they could have done a much better job of it. Rock Watchers, really? (not to be confused with rock lobster) It's a nice touch that the fallen angels get to go back to heaven, although that's not at all what happens to them even in the Pseudepigrapha (it was like a sprinkle of Prometheus with a Gnostic twist). I kept thinking, come on, if we're going to go apocalyptic with this story, I could do a lot better.

Basically, I thought it wasn't done well even from the opening scene. I felt like I was watching some cave drawing or silent movie with sound. I thought Methuselah came off as something between goofy and creepy, despite Anthony Hopkins, like some character out of a Monty Python skit (Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here). (BTW, no one will be surprised to know that as a nerdy child sitting in church I added up the ages in Genesis 5 and, indeed, Methuselah does end up dying the year of the Flood ;-).

Ham made me uncomfortable although I suppose the point was well taken that the line of Seth was subject to sin just as the line of Cain. Believe it or not, there was just a touch of orthodox theology hidden in there. There were a couple points where I thought it was about to go a little deep but then seemed to end up coming off a little cheezy. I didn't like Tubal-Cain eliminating a species on the ark for a snack, but that probably was, reluctantly, quite a striking scene, a replay of the Garden of Eden.

It's hard to detach myself from the Noah story I know and watch the movie objectively, admittedly. There were some interesting ideas floated in the movie, for example, that animals can be on the ark because they're innocent (but did the movie end up endorsing that point of view?). There was a quasi-evolutionary, day-age interpretation of Genesis 1 that was interesting, even if strangely set out with time lapse photography :-)

I'm trying not to fall into "Three Wise Men Syndrome," though, when I say I just didn't enjoy it. Three Wise Men Syndrome is when someone gets upset because someone messes with the way they have interpreted a famous Bible story. I have no doubt that the Israelites read the Flood story quite differently than my Sunday School Pix cartoons pictured it. I suspect Jude and Peter read the story differently than my Picture Bible, given that they actually engage the Enochic literature I mentioned above. 1 Peter 3:19-20 may very well refer to the Watchers (cf. Gen. 6:1-4).

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Dave Ward was kind enough to let me teach an evening philosophy class this semester. My long worked on philosophy textbook, by the way, is almost out in electronic form. Whether it ever takes on print form depends on the market. Times, they are a changing.

In any case, below is 30 minute video I did overviewing Enlightenment epistemology. Although we're meeting for class on Adobe Connect tonight, most Thursday nights you could follow some of our banter by the Twitter hashtag #180cphilosophy. Tonight, though, we're online in a more private environment.

1. I might have titled these thoughts on the second chapter, "Einstein in 1915." That is the year that Einstein delivered a shortfour page paper to the Prussian Academy of Sciences explaining how gravity fit with relativity and thus truly gave birth to the general theory of relativity (as opposed to the special theory he set out in 1905). The paper consisted of 10 field equations.

There is some debate whether Einstein actually put these equations in their final form first or whether David Hilbert did. Einstein was not a math-lover, particularly. To be sure, he was way ahead of most of us, but he considered math "superfluous erudition."

I have a hunch I know where he was coming from. He did not mean the calculus or algebra that we find so useful in engineering. I suspect he meant the drive to prove things that seem obvious. From what I can tell, Einstein was more of an intuitive soul, and the drive to mathematical minutia probably did not suit him well.

David Hilbert (University of Göttingen) was quite the opposite, with an agenda to solve 23 problems in the twentieth century. A quick perusal of the list and you might agree with Einstein. Hilbert wanted to "reduce every single mathematical fact in the universe from no more than half a dozen axioms" (76). Kurt Gödel would later demolish Hilbert's goal in 1931 with his incompleteness theorem.

Hilbert was extraordinarily more gifted at math than Einstein and Einstein ended up turning to him to help with non-Euclidean geometry, which was less than 100 years old. Euclid was Greek and had proposed, using common sense, that two parallel lines never meet. In the 1820s, Carl Friedrich Gauss had explored the rules of geometry on, say, curved sheets of paper, where Euclid's assumptions don't hold. On a sphere, parallel lines intersect and the angles of a triangle add up to 270 degrees. Bernhard Riemann in the 1850s had explored the rules of geometry into all sorts of non-Euclidean obscurity.

So in 1915, Einstein and Hilbert mailed back and forth, as Einstein tried to use Riemann's math to express gravity as a result of the curvature of space rather than as a force per se. It's still debated whether Hilbert beat Einstein, although Hilbert yielded to Einstein and Einstein usually gets the ultimate credit. It might be fair to say that neither would have come up with the answer without the other.

Einstein came up with 10 equations of 10 functions of the geometry of space and time in which "gravity is nothing more than objects moving in the geometry of spacetime. Massive objects affect the geometry, curving space and time" (21).

2. There is a second part to the chapter that relates to Arthur Eddington. There is often a politics and a history to science, as to any discipline, and it is seen in this book. In 1915, Europe was at war. In World War I, the Germans were fighting the English. Both many English scientists and German scientists went irrational, as war tends to make all of us. 93 German scientists (not Einstein) signed "An Appeal to the Cultured World" in support of the German government and rather bad on its facts. Meanwhile, Eddington's colleagues in England wanted to dismiss all German scientific thought as obviously inferior.

Eddington managed to convince the right people to let him head to the island of Principe in 1918 instead of to the war. His task? To measure where a certain set of stars appeared to be as their light passed by the sun during an eclipse. As Einstein's theory had predicted, their apparent position was off approximately what Einstein's theory said it would be due to the effect of the sun curving space because of its great mass.

In 1919 Eddington presented the results to the Royal Astronomical Society, "the most important result obtained in connection with the theory of gravitation since Newton's day," J. J. Thompson said (discoverer of the electron). Einstein was now a celebrity and Eddington the foremost authority on Einstein's theory in the English-speaking world.

The general theory of relativity has been substantiated time and time again ever since. Without taking such things into account, things like GPS wouldn't work.

Matthew 21 has the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple, the Parable of the Tenants.

Matthew 21 also has the Parable of the Two Sons, which is a shorter version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke.

Matthew 22 has the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, which gives us a strong hint that the Gospel of Matthew was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. We would already have suspected such a date from the fact that Matthew used Mark, which is probably late 60s or even early 70s itself. But the way Matthew has edited the story to mention the king sending his army to burn the city of those first invited to the banquet seems a direct allusion to Jerusalem's destruction at the hands of the Romans in AD70.

Matthew 23 gives us the harshest critique of the Pharisees. It is sometimes suggested that Matthew was written when the Pharisees were in the ascendancy of power after Jerusalem's destruction, giving Matthew reason to put them in their place.

We also find in Matthew 23 the main New Testament text from which you might teach tithing in the New Testament. It's not exactly a strong text.

Matthew has some unique material added on to Mark's end times sermon. The Parable of the Ten Virgins urges readiness for Christ's return.

The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats suggests that our faith better lead to concrete action in helping others or we may not find ourselves justified before God in the Final Judgment. By the way, there is some similarity here to the judgment of the Son of Man in the Parables of 1 Enoch (the chapter after calls this elect one the Son of Man).

My passage for the day:

Matthew 23:24 has always stood out to me, "To strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." Too many people major on the minor. Jesus was about the important matters of the Law--"justice, mercy, and faithfulness." Any approach to the Bible that cannot distinguish the central matters of Scripture from the less central ones doesn't get Jesus and thus doesn't get the Bible.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Today's reading starts where the Parable Sermon ended and goes through the fourth sermon of Matthew, the Kingdom Sermon.

Matthew 13 ends with a little insight into Jesus' family. He had brothers and sisters, for example. And, interestingly, he did not make anyone get healed. He didn't heal unless people had faith.

A lot of the material in these chapters is core "Mark" material (it's generally thought that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a starting point): feeding of 5000, feeding of 4000, tussle with Pharisees on washing hands, Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Transfiguration, etc...

Matthew 16's version of Peter's confession has the famous statement (very important to Catholics) that Jesus would build his kingdom on Peter? on the rock that was Peter's confession?

Curious story about Jesus paying the Temple Tax (not tax to Caesar but to the Temple). Peter finds the coin they need in a fish!

Matthew 18 has that classic passage on how to address a person caught in a sin in the church.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Sermon is quite shocking because, after being forgiven and then not forgiving someone else, the master decides not to forgive him after all. In other words, God's forgiveness comes with expectations.

The passage I'm picking as my personal take-away this time:

Although I usually reference the Mark 7 version, very significant for my theology are the verses that indicate that purity is something that starts in the heart and makes its way to the outside. Righteousness is a matter of the heart, not of externals.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

There are two items on my life's bucket list that I fear I will never attain--a general understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity. There's nothing more humbling to me than my repeated attempts to start up these mountains.

I came across a book a few weeks ago, The Perfect Theory, that I'm giving a little time to this week on vacation. It's about Einstein's theory of general relativity. I doubt I'll get too far into it but I thought I might blog a little to jog the memory when I retire at 70 and return to that bucket list with all that free time. :-)

The first chapter starts interestingly enough in 1907. That's further than I've ever gotten before. Einstein came up with his theory of special relativity in 1905. That was the year he published his paper arguing that clocks move more slowly and objects appear to shrink as they approach the speed of light.

He was working as a patent clerk from 8-6 every day at the time and talking through the problems of modern physics with his old friend Marcel Grossman on the side. Einstein didn't play the game of academics very well. He did what he wanted and didn't accept the principle that professors assign grades which have something to do with getting jobs. So patent office it was, a mercy job even at that.

Einstein set out to resolve the consequent contradictions from two claims of the physics of his day: 1) the laws of physics work the same in any inertial frame and 2) the speed of light always has the same value. These two principles contradicted each other because if you shine a light from the front of a moving train, you would think that light would move faster than some light you shined from a flashlight on the ground in the same direction.

If I have it right, Einstein's famous solution was to suggest that, from your perspective standing on the ground, the time for the light shining from the front of the train moves more slowly than it does for you with the light shining from you the ground. But on the train, time moves the same as always.

Thus the grandfather paradox. If I am on a train moving close to the speed of light, time proceeds normally for me. But if my son does not get on that train. He may grow up and have children who, by the time I return to the speed he is moving, are older than I am.

The Special Theory of Relativity only works for frames of reference that are moving at a constant speed in relation to each other. It does not apply to frames of reference that are speeding up in relation to other frames of reference. In other words, it only works if the train is moving at a constant speed in relation to the ground.

Meanwhile, gravity involves acceleration. Einstein didn't have it all figured out (and he would need help), but he had an insight in 1907 that would later bear the appropriate fruit. "If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight." What I take this insight to be is that, in the frame of reference of the person falling, there is a constancy that is different from that perceived by a person looking on, much as that experienced by a person on a train who does not feel the speed an observer on the ground observes.

With a little help, this seed would lead to a general theory in 1915 that could accommodate gravity and accelerating frames of reference.

This section has two more of Matthew's five sermons, perhaps implicitly comparing Jesus to Moses. Matthew 10 has the Mission Sermon and Matthew 13 has the Parable Sermon.

Matthew has the story of the centurion's faith. Even though Matthew is probably aimed at Jewish believers, this story makes it clear that there are Gentiles who have faith too. Notice, also that Jesus seems to picture the kingdom of God being on a renewed earth.

Matthew 13:52 is the passage that some think might hint at something about the author of Matthew.

The Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 is scary, because it hints that not everyone in the church is really part of the kingdom. It is similar to something Jesus also said in the Sermon on the Mount.

Verses of the day for me:

Matthew 8:18-22 make it clear that following Jesus requires everything of us. Following Jesus doesn't often come into conflict with our families or other ordinary aspects of living, but in moments of ultimate decision, Jesus is the ultimate priority. That's what it means to be Lord.

Monday, March 24, 2014

This is Nijay Gupta's response to the President of Cedarville's strong advocacy of complementarianism. There is probably room for some complementarianism within the Wesleyan Church, but the faculty of Wesley Seminary, as well as the faculty of the School of Theology and Ministry at Indiana Wesleyan, are egalitarian. We love and respect our complementarian students, but we believe that egalitarianism is the position most in keeping with the Wesleyan tradition.

So we begin the second half of this 40 day journey with the Gospel of Matthew. For today's reading, which goes through the Sermon on the Mount, click here.

Reading notes:

I thought the intro to Matthew here was bold (for the NIV especially) to suggest that the author probably wasn't Matthew but rather someone with extensive training in the Law. Of course the Gospel is anonymous technically. But right or wrong in this case, submission to the Truth requires openness to modifying our traditions, including traditions about the Bible.

The genealogy of Matthew 1 is intriguing both in its division into 14s (the number of King David's name) and its mention of key women throughout. Each of these women is a testament to how God can use women considered questionable by others.

Perhaps these women implicitly prepare us for the story of the virgin birth (or more accurately, virgin conception), since Mary would have been looked at with suspicion.

The importance of the virgin birth for Christian faith highlights the importance of the church after the New Testament, since the virgin birth receives almost no attention whatsoever in the Bible alone.

The most important part of today's reading is the Sermon on the Mount. In my opinion, the key verses of the Sermon on the Mount are 5:17-20. The entire sermon maps out how Jesus' teaching gives the full meaning of the Law, as well as what kind of righteousness God is looking for in relation to the kingdom of God.

Matthew 5:21-48 gives a number of examples of this full meaning to the Law. It is not merely extending. Jesus gets to the heart of each matter in the light of the law of love. It's not enough not to murder outwardly. The person who fulfills the law of love does not murder inwardly either.

Similarly, it's not enough not to commit adultery outwardly or illegally. The person who fulfills the law of love does not commit adultery inwardly or legally by getting a divorce.

However, the last examples in Matthew 5 show that the law of love does not merely extend the OT law. At points it modifies or even reverses it. Jesus models for us that OT commands have to be filtered carefully through the law of love.

Matthew 7 gives the bottom line after hearing the sermon. If you're a wise person, you'll build your house on Jesus' teaching.

The NIV introduction is probably right that "Matthew" wanted his audience to think of Moses as they read. Jesus has more authority than Moses, and gives the fulfilled meaning of the Law from a new mountain.

Personal take-away:

Again, Matthew 5:43-48 pretty sums up all of Christian ethics. Love everyone, including your enemies, or to put it another way, "Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12). You can't trump these verses with other verses.

I continue my Sunday theology posts. You can see a map to the whole concept here. I'm figuring out the order and precise content of this series as I go.
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God has the power to do anything he wants. He is "all-powerful." In theology, we say he is "omnipotent."

The idea that God is all-powerful flows directly from the idea that he created the universe out of nothing or "ex nihilo," as the Latin goes. When we say God created the universe out of nothing, we are saying something different from what ancient creation stories typically said. In those creation stories, creation is the organization of matter that already exists in a chaotic state. When Christians say that God created the universe out of nothing, we are saying he not only ordered the creation but that he created the matter of the creation itself. [1]

The creation is thus distinct from God. The creation is not part of God, let alone all of God. [2] As a previous article said, God does not need the creation, although the creation needs God. The creation is not self-sufficient, although God is.

With the discovery of relativity in the twentieth century, we are now in a better position than ever to recognize that God not only created the matter of the universe but the very space in which that matter exists. That is to say, God not only created the universe, but he created the emptiness in which the universe exists. He created space and time. This realization may help clarify aspects of God's relationship to the creation that no Christians before the 1900s would have fully understood.

If God created the world out of nothing, then it follows logically that he must have enough power to create the universe. You cannot lift a rock if you do not have enough strength to lift the rock. In the same way, God must have enough power to create a universe out of nothing, meaning that he must have all power in relation to the creation.

So God has the power to do anything in the creation that the creation can do and more. Miracles are when God does more than the creation can do. God created the universe to follow certain natural laws. On its own, the universe follows these rules. But as God, God sometimes interrupts the normal cause-effect chain of reality and breaks the rules. This is what a true miracle is, when God does something in the creation that is outside the normal cause and effect chain of events.

Indeed, one argument for the existence of a Creator is the "cosmological argument," which suggests that the existence of God makes sense in the light of cause and effect. Although we should not consider the determinations of science final or necessary for theology, science currently suggests that the universe had a beginning. But if the universe had a beginning, it makes sense to ask why it began or what caused it. The notion that God was the "first mover" or the initial cause of the universe certainly makes sense, even if it is not an absolute proof. [3]

The common response, "Then where did God come from?" misunderstands the argument as presented above. The idea that it makes sense for the universe to have a cause is a comment on the universe, not on its cause. Indeed, this argument directly suggests that God's essence is "outside" or "beyond" the universe. Things inside this universe seem to need causes. We have no point of reference to say whether things outside this universe do.

An even more foolish question is whether God can create a rock so big that he cannot lift it, as if the notion of all power is incoherent in itself. The word "can" in this question is used in two different ways and we might reword it to ask, "Is it possible for God to create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?" The answer is no, because God can can lift any rock. In fact, God would not be omnipotent if there were a rock he couldn't lift. It is a trick question which more or less asks whether it is possible for God not to be omnipotent. The answer is "no."

Basically, to say God is all powerful does not mean that everything is possible for God to do. Is it possible for God to fail? No. God could only fail if he chose to fail, and in that case he would have succeeded.

God has the power to do anything, because he created the universe out of nothing. So God has absolute power over every aspect of the world. He can make the universe do anything the universe can do, and he can even make the universe do things it can't do.

Next week. G4. God can do whatever he wants.

[1] It is not clear that the Bible itself yet understood creation out of nothing. Genesis 1:1-2 can be read grammatically and contextually as the ordering of chaotic waters and creation out of materials that were already there. Similarly, it is not agreed whether Hebrews 11:3 pictures creation out of nothing. Nevertheless, it is agreed that by the end of the second century AD, the Gnostic controversy had solidified Christian belief in creation out of nothing, and it has been part of common Christian belief ever since.

The Gnostics believed that matter was evil. An early Christian named Marcion (ca. 150) even believed that the creator God of the Old Testament was an evil being. In response to Gnosticism, Christians asserted strongly not only that the God of the Old Testament was the same God as in the New Testament but that he had created the universe out of nothing, not from pre-existing materials. Non-Christian Jews seem to have solidified their belief in creation out of nothing at the same time for the same reasons.

[2] The view that the world is God is called "pantheism." The view that the world is part of God is sometimes called "panentheism" today. As early as the 100s and 200s, Christians generally rejected the idea that the world was an emanation from God.

[3] Another argument for the existence of God is the so called "ontological argument." In its classical form, it probably doesn't make sense. Anselm in the 1000s suggested in effect that, since we can conceive of the greatest possible being, he must actually exist (in a work called Proslogion). Although the way he formulated this argument probably doesn't work, some in modern times have attempted to rehabilitate it in a different form, chiefly Alvin Plantinga, The Ontological Argument from St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965). However, it is not clear that they succeeded.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The reason 2 Timothy is put last in this series is because it is something like Paul's last will and testament. Some of Paul's farewell reminds me of his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts 20. Paul has fought the good fight.

There are some good charges for pastors in here (thus, "pastoral" epistles). Pastors are to "rightly divide the word of truth," as the King James puts it.

One of them has to do with the inspiration of Scripture. Important to recognize that Paul is talking about Scripture as a tool of formation that leads to salvation. He is not talking about Scripture as an answer book or limiting the instruction of Scripture only to its literal sense.

He tells Timothy to preach the word and warns about the importance of sound teaching.

Personal take away:

2 Timothy 2:15 just has always stood out to me--I want to "rightly divide the word of truth." I want to hear what God is really saying through the words of Scripture.

Friday, March 21, 2014

We finish up the Pauline letters at the end of Week 4 with Titus and 2 Timothy. Today marks the half way point.

Titus

Titus and 2 Timothy, like 1 Timothy, are called the Pastoral Epistles. They are written to coworkers of Paul, Timothy and Titus. Timothy is at Ephesus; Titus was at Crete.

Like 1 Timothy, Titus deals with the twin concerns of false teaching and church order. The false teaching in Titus seems to be Jewish in nature.

Probably the most striking thing about Titus is the way it flat out calls Jesus God (Titus 2:13). Jesus is called Son of God, Christ, etc all over the place but it is really not too frequent that he is flat out called God.

2 Timothy

The reason 2 Timothy is put last in this series is because it is something like Paul's last will and testament. Some of Paul's farewell reminds me of his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts 20. Paul has fought the good fight.

There are some good charges for pastors in here (thus, "pastoral" epistles). Pastors are to "rightly divide the word of truth," as the King James puts it.

One of them has to do with the inspiration of Scripture. Important to recognize that Paul is talking about Scripture as a tool of formation that leads to salvation. He is not talking about Scripture as an answer book or limiting the instruction of Scripture only to its literal sense.

He tells Timothy to preach the word and warns about the importance of sound teaching.

Personal take away today:

2 Timothy 2:15 just has always stood out to me--I want to "rightly divide the word of truth." I want to hear what God is really saying through the words of Scripture.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

These are easily the most unique writings among the Pauline letters. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are called the "Pastoral Epistles." While most evangelical scholars have difficulty with the notion of pseudonymity, most non-evangelical scholars believe these letters meant to give Paul voice several decades after his death.1 Timothy

The NIV introduction suggests that Paul was freed after he appeared before Nero the first time. This is a convenient and popular suggestion, even though it does not at all seem to be what Acts foreshadows.

1 Timothy is quite distinct from Paul's earlier letters. One should never start their Pauline theology with it but rather start with the earlier letters and see how 1 Timothy is distinct.

For example, while Paul ideally encourages widows not to remarry in 1 Corinthians 7, he pragmatically suggests they do in 1 Timothy 5.

Paul's stark words to wives not to teach or dominate their husbands in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is also quite striking, given the way women prophesied at Corinth in the presence of their husbands and other men. In any case, you should never build a theology out of a single verse.

This suggests that situational dynamics might have been in play in 1 Timothy (others suggest it was written after Paul's death to give Paul voice to a later context several decades later).

The two main concerns of 1 Timothy are false teaching and congregational order. 1 Timothy 3 deals with the main criteria for the overseers/elders of a local assembly, as well as its deacons.

Titus

Titus and 2 Timothy, like 1 Timothy, are called the Pastoral Epistles. They are written to coworkers of Paul, Timothy and Titus. Timothy is at Ephesus; Titus was at Crete.

Like 1 Timothy, Titus deals with the twin concerns of false teaching and church order. The false teaching in Titus seems to be Jewish in nature.

Probably the most striking thing about Titus is the way it flat out calls Jesus God (Titus 2:13). Jesus is called Son of God, Christ, etc all over the place but it is really not too frequent that he is flat out called God.

Chock full of memory verses (especially chapter 4)--learning to be content, to live is Christ, I can do all things through Christ, my God will supply all your needs, rejoice in the Lord, think on the right things, working out our salvation with fear and trembling...

Traditionally from Rome, although Ephesus is also suggested, Paul is thanking them for the material support they have sent while he awaits trial in prison.

He does stop in the meantime to push them toward unity and uses the example of Christ in the hymn of Philippians 2. Later in the letter he will urge two of the women leaders of the church to settle their differences.

In chapter 3, he warns the Gentile audience against getting circumcised. He gives his resume as a Jew but in the end indicates it wasn't enough, wasn't anything next to Christ.

One other interesting thing about this chapter--Paul indicates he was very good at keeping the Law before he believed. It's just that doesn't amount to anything next to Christ.

By the way, I think the upward call in 3:14 has to do with resurrection. In 3:12, Paul is not talking about him not being perfect yet. He's saying he isn't yet guaranteed resurrection. He is not pressing on toward perfection but toward the hope of resurrection.

1 Timothy

The NIV introduction suggests that Paul was freed after he appeared before Nero the first time. This is a convenient and popular suggestion, even though it does not at all seem to be what Acts foreshadows.

1 Timothy is quite distinct from Paul's earlier letters. One should never start their Pauline theology with it but rather start with the earlier letters and see how 1 Timothy is distinct.

For example, while Paul ideally encourages widows not to remarry in 1 Corinthians 7, he pragmatically suggests they do in 1 Timothy 5.

Paul's stark words to wives not to teach or dominate their husbands in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is also quite striking, given the way women prophesied at Corinth in the presence of their husbands and other men. In any case, you should never build a theology out of a single verse.

This suggests that situational dynamics might have been in play in 1 Timothy (others suggest it was written after Paul's death to give Paul voice to a later context several decades later).

The two main concerns of 1 Timothy are false teaching and congregational order. 1 Timothy 3 deals with the main criteria for the overseers/elders of a local assembly, as well as its deacons.

My favorite of the day:

What an incredible world it would be if we all had the same attitude as Jesus Christ in the Philippian hymn--he was equal to God but took on the status of a servant, even died for us.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

In this alternative grouping, Philemon and Philippians are only put together because of the possibility that they were written during time in prison at Ephesus. For the grouping of these two in the original 40 Day Bible series, see here for Philemon and here for Philippians.Philemon:

Closely associated with Colossians. We don't know exactly what Onesimus did. Did he run away? Did he mess up a business deal, since slaves in that day sometimes were very educated and did their master's work. Slavery was not racial in the manner of American slavery.

Paul doesn't specifically tell Philemon to set Onesimus free. He asks him to receive him back and presumably not punish him. Paul promises to pay for any money Philemon might be out.

It is fun that Paul turns the screws on Philemon by sending this seemingly very personal and sensitive matter to the whole church. Talk about peer pressure! Everyone looking at Philemon to see what he'll do.

Like the introduction says, we'd like to think that Philemon gave him his freedom and that he eventually became bishop of Ephesus, as tradition suggests.

It is speculation, but does Paul's quick departure from Ephesus in Acts 18:18-21 allude to an initial arrest of Paul in Ephesus, causing him to leave the city for a time? Might he have visited Philemon as he says in this letter? Colossae was at least one path to take through the interior of Asia Minor.

Philippians:

Chock full of memory verses (especially chapter 4)--learning to be content, to live is Christ, I can do all things through Christ, my God will supply all your needs, rejoice in the Lord, think on the right things, working out our salvation with fear and trembling...

Traditionally from Rome, although Ephesus is also suggested, Paul is thanking them for the material support they have sent while he awaits trial in prison. Philippians sure sounds like 2 Corinthians 1:8.

He does stop in the meantime to push them toward unity and uses the example of Christ in the hymn of Philippians 2. Later in the letter he will urge two of the women leaders of the church to settle their differences.

In chapter 3, he warns the Gentile audience against getting circumcised. He gives his resume as a Jew but in the end indicates it wasn't enough, wasn't anything next to Christ.

One other interesting thing about this chapter--Paul indicates he was very good at keeping the Law before he believed. It's just that doesn't amount to anything next to Christ.

By the way, I think the upward call in 3:14 has to do with resurrection. In 3:12, Paul is not talking about him not being perfect yet. He's saying he isn't yet guaranteed resurrection. He is not pressing on toward perfection but toward the hope of resurrection.

I agree with the introduction they give, that it is not likely that Ephesians was written specifically to Ephesus. I know that messes with our traditions but Truth is bigger than traditions. The biggest reason to me is that Paul could never have written Ephesians 3:2 to a place he had just spent three years. So it is no surprise that the earliest copies we have of Ephesians don't have the words "at Ephesus" in them.

The main proposals for destination include: 1) that Ephesians is the lost letter to the Laodiceans, 2) that Ephesians was a circular letter, sent to the whole region of, say, Asia, or 3) that Ephesians was written some time after Paul's death as a literary device to summarize his teaching, perhaps even as a cover letter for the collection of his writings (Edgar Goodspeed).

Ephesians is very similar to Colossians in structure and content, which might be taken as support for #1 above. Ephesians seems to be a generalized, broadened version of Colossians.

The main theme of Ephesians is the unity of the church, primarily meaning the unity of Gentile and Jewish believers. As the introduction says, the audience is Gentile.

There is a lot of imagery of the church in Ephesians. Paul usually talks about the church in reference to local congregations but Ephesians talks about the big Church, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (meaning New Testament prophets, I think).

Ephesians 4 begins the second half, the "how to live" section. It is Ephesians' version of the turn at Colossians 3. More here about the unity of the church: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all...

Ephesians 5-6 have an expanded version of the household codes in Colossians. Colossians understandably emphasizes the slavery part, since Onesimus had been alienated from his master, Philemon. Ephesians emphasizes the husband part to celebrate how Christ loved the church.

Finally, Ephesians 6 gives us the armor of God passage many of us learned as children.

Some thoughts on Philemon:

Closely associated with Colossians. We don't know exactly what Onesimus did. Did he run away? Did he mess up a business deal, since slaves in that day sometimes were very educated and did their master's work. Slavery was not racial in the manner of American slavery.

Paul doesn't specifically tell Philemon to set Onesimus free. He asks him to receive him back and presumably not punish him. Paul promises to pay for any money Philemon might be out.

It is fun that Paul turns the screws on Philemon by sending this seemingly very personal and sensitive matter to the whole church. Talk about peer pressure! Everyone looking at Philemon to see what he'll do.

Like the introduction says, we'd like to think that Philemon gave him his freedom and that he eventually became bishop of Ephesus, as tradition suggests.

Personal take-away:

So many nuggets in here: "In your anger, do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph. 4:26). "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you" (4:32). Things to teach your children and remind yourself of often.

Things to sing in here--the church's one foundation, is Jesus Christ the Lord... I understand worship styles are cultural, but I can't think of any modern ditty that comes close to the depth of the words of this hymn.

The first chapter is "Aren't the Copies of the Bible Hopelessly Corrupt?" I think for most of us who have studied the New Testament, this is an easy question with an obvious answer--"No, we pretty much know what the New Testament said originally."

But there have been some recent nay-sayers like Bart Ehrman who, if you read his footnotes, pretty much agrees with the rest of us too. But he caused a little stir with his book Misquoting Jesus. Did you know that we don't have any of the first copies of any biblical text? The ones we have are often hundreds of years later. How do we know what the original text said?

Again, this is ho-hum stuff to anyone who has actually studied the New Testament. Blomberg addresses the ambiguity that really isn't ambiguous: "What Ehrman doesn't make clear is that the number and nature of manuscripts we have make it extraordinarily unlikely that we shall ever again find variants that are not already known" (16). In other words, just because the 1800s took some people off guard with some big manuscript surprises, it's likely that we're pretty much surprised out now.

The New Testament
Blomberg goes on to explain some of the issues that can be startling in relation to the New Testament text. There are chiefly two: Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11. If you have grown up with these verses, say in the King James Version, it can be alarming to find that the majority of experts on the original text do not think they were originally part of Mark and John respectively.

But Blomberg makes it clear that these are the most shocking of all the shocks. There are no more big bomb shells to drop once you have passed these. "There are no other places in all 25,000+ manuscripts where any other passages like these two appear" (21). Furthermore, the evidence for these two not being in the original text is solid, both in terms of the way the earliest copies of the New Testament read and the most logical way of explaining how the various copies we have have ended up the way they are.

There are a few other interesting variations, but "the vast majority of textual variants are wholly uninteresting except to specialists" (27). Are there a lot of variations among manuscripts? Sure, maybe as many as 40,000. But they are spread out among 25,000 manuscripts and in the overwhelming majority of cases it is completely obvious what happened. Blomberg rightly concludes, "no orthodox doctrine or ethical practice of Christianity depends solely on any disputed wording."

The Old Testament
Blomberg finds it interesting that skeptics rarely mention the Old Testament when questioning the biblical text. There are some unknowns and variations about how some parts of the Old Testament read originally. The best known manuscript tradition is that of the Masoretic Text (MT), which is usually the starting point when a translation is working on the Old Testament. Then other manuscript traditions are brought into play, like the Greek translation (Septuagint), the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so forth.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) were discovered, the most impressive observation was "how similar they were to the Masoretic texts of a millennium or more later" (29). In general, Blomberg finds no evidence that there was ever a time when those who copied the Hebrew Old Testament were not careful in their copying (34). Nevertheless, there have been some interesting instances where the DSS confirmed a Greek reading over the MT or where a new reading was discovered that had never been known.

Were There "Originals"?
Some have questioned recently whether it even makes sense to speak of an original version of a biblical text. Some think that some of the books in the Bible came together in stages. If so, which one should be considered the final form and thus the original text?

Blomberg first notes that such theories are entirely speculative (33). Nevertheless, he is willing to say that, in some Old Testament cases, it may make sense to speak of the "earliest attainable" form. But he also points out that "the original copy of a biblical book would most likely have been used to make countless new copies over a period of several centuries, leading to still more favorable conditions for careful preservation of its contents" (34). We can fantasize about all sorts of wild changes, but in the end they are exactly that--fantasy (35).

Comparatively Speaking
Blomberg helpfully takes a couple pages to show how much better a situation we are in with regard to the text of the Bible than we are for other ancient texts. Homer's writings come the closest, and there we're looking at 2,500 manuscripts in comparison to 25,000. For some old texts, we may only have a single copy from the ancient world. If we are to question the Bible, then we have to question all ancient writings on any topic (36)!The Opposite Extreme
Finally, he addresses those who insist the Greek behind the King James Version is the only accurate text. He is quite blunt about how few scholars there are who actually think anything like this. He points out that Christians throughout the centuries have never claimed that the transmission of the text was inerrant. Indeed, neither those who worked on the Greek text behind the KJV nor those who translated the KJV thought that they had the perfect text.

Modern translations are not removing words from the biblical text. They are restoring the way the text originally read. Christians should rejoice in the fact that the Bible is in the hands of ordinary people in the English language. The alternative is not the KJV but to make everyone learn Greek and Hebrew to read the "real" text, like Muslims who insist on only reading the Qur'an in Arabic.

Conclusion to Chapter 1
Blomberg concludes that the Bibles we have are remarkably close approximations to the inerrant originals God inspired. We need not worry about knowing what the Bible says. They have not been inerrantly preserved, but this is not a problem for faith. They have been accurately preserved.

Neither is the topic of the next chapter something about which to worry--whether the sixty-six books in the Protestant Bible are the right books.